Oh, my kingdom for a case...

Here's an esoteric topic - naming patterns for code. :-)

As you might recall, if you're a regular reader of this blog or are married to me (Hi, Mrs! :-) ), I am playing with MacRuby. A decidedly fun [if you call writing code 'fun'] language and environment. But there's a problem... What do you call methods, class and variables? More specifically - how do you format those names?

The problem comes from the underlying foundation - something called "Cocoa" and the language that is written in, Objective-C. The standard nomenclature for which is best described as "verbose". There's very little room within the recommendations for abbreviated naming. "Application" is written as "Application". Most mortally inclined programmers would, I think, prefer the shorter "app". Interestingly, the main file for a MacRuby app is "AppDelegate.rb"; that, however, seems to be acceptable! Anyway, it contains a class "AppDelegate" and a method "applicationDidFinishLoading".

#

#  AppDelegate.rb

#  Sandbox

#

#  Created by Carolyn Ann on 11/27/12.

#  Copyright 2012 Carolyn Ann. All rights reserved.

#

class AppDelegate

  def applicationDidFinishLaunching(a_notification)

    # Insert code here to initialize your application

  end

  

end

(No, I'm not breaking any NDA; this is open source code.)

If this conformed to Ruby standards, it would be:

#

#  app_delegate.rb

#  Sandbox

#

#  Created by Carolyn Ann on 11/27/12.

#  Copyright 2012 Carolyn Ann. All rights reserved.

#

class AppDelegate

  def app_finished_launching(a_notification)

    # Insert code here to initialize your application

  end

  

end

Some subtle differences, right? (Okay, if you're into waging religious wars over braces "{ ... }", then the differences are about as subtle as an oak tree to the back of your head. Most people don't get that worked up about such things. So: work with me, here. :-) )

Now, there are two schools of thought on this: go with the Cocoa 'camelCase' standard, and go with the Ruby 'snake_case' standard. (Duh...) As is often the case, if I'm not sure about something and try to explain whatever it is to someone else, my own thoughts are clarified. So... I'd say the Cocoa standard is the one to use.

Here's why: there's very little that can be written in a true cross-platform way. While it is possible to use RubyGems - and you should! - that code can be a different style. Your own code, however, should be adhere to a style that is known and accepted for that platform. OS X and iOS (that's behind the iPad and iPhone) have a particular style - it is known and it is generally accepted. If you stick to the Apple supplied standard, you avoid strange looking code:

class AppDelegate

  def applicationDidFinishLaunching(a_notification)

    call_this_bit_of_ruby_code

    andNowCallhisBitOfOSX

  end

end

That just looks odd. Although it does have the advantage that you can tell where a bit of code is located. (I just declarified* the issue for myself...) Also, note the snake_cased option. Those are camelCased in Objective-C/Cocoa.

*No, that's not a word. ... However, it is now. :-)

Knowing I'm calling Ruby code can be useful. What of my own code? What if I want to write a wrapper function?

class SomeClass

  def someMethodWithAReallyLongName(and_a_lot_of_options)

    theWrappedMethod not_set_options, preset_options

  end

  

  def some_method_with_a_really_long_name(lots_of_options)

    theWrappedMethod not_set_options, preset_options

  end

  

  def long_named_method(lots_of_options)

    theWrappedMethod not_set_options, preset_options

  end

end

I gotta tell you - that first method looks "cleaner", more consistent. Now, I know I'll be calling third-party code, and I won't be wrapping those; I'll call them as Ruby code. Besides being the indicator it's not my code, I'm not inclined to change other people's code to satisfy (or have) some religious lust for naming consistency!

I took a look around, and there's no agreement on naming conventions; mind you, there's not a lot of MacRuby open source code on GitHub. 85 pages of mostly forked MacRuby code. The application code I could find had the same problem - some coders used Ruby's snake_case, and some used Cocoa/Obj-C's camelCase. I am inclined to play with the conventions and see what's best. Like I said, there's not much chance of writing cross-platform code (heck, you need to use cross-platform coding between iOS and OS X!), so the biggest issue seems to be which style should win the religious wars that always inhabit these topics. I think I'll stick to camelCase; mostly because I've never really liked snake_case. Your mileage, as the saying goes, may vary. :-)

Carolyn Ann